Fidelito Takes Flight Up a Ladder

A blur of upwardness that is climbing. The flat board pressed to palm,
pressed to foot sole. It becomes motion-slurred arrival, which
Fidelito
makes: first step, second step. The ladder stretches like an awkward
smile
of hello, of departure.
The boy, trusting only what he feels by hand, begins to forget the
ground.
With his right foot on the first rung, he hears the sky call his name.
When
the left meets the right, he hears birdcall. Then the right to the
next,
the horizon moving on without him. Then the left, the last board
before the
fall. When the right and left are reconciled, Fidelito finds himself
unsteady, his legs paired as if bound. A pause. Nowhere left to go.
Meanwhile, in the blue above, larks explode like hours following hours.

Oliver de la Paz

Fidelito Takes Flight Up a Ladder